Sometimes I feel like Katniss in Hunger Games when I’m trying to get around NYC.  One particular challenge is negotiating the city’s streets–especially at night and when they are the city’s major avenues.

Let’s take Broadway, for instance.  It’s idiosyncratically off-the-grid and slices through many of the city’s streets, and even an avenue or two, in ways that certainly perplexes tourists and often the occasional New Yorker.  It’s quite wide in some sections of the Upper West Side, in particular, but the countdown pedestrian signals were obviously calibrated by an Olympic sprinter working in the Department of Transportation.  And I’m not even slowed down by a cane or a walker.

Apart from my concern about whether I’ll reach the safety of the opposite sidewalk before getting mowed down by an 18-wheeler truck careening down the avenue at speeds well above the mandated 25 mph, is my fear whether I’m visible as a pedestrian if I get stuck somewhere in the middle.

So I’m trying to wear as much white as possible, which makes me look as though I’ve joined a cult.  Maybe I should start carrying a bow and arrow like Katniss to look more formidable.  If nothing else they’d slow down for a good laugh.